


Make Way for Pie-Rates

by gillie



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pushing Daisies AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 01:29:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3362753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gillie/pseuds/gillie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newly-adopted Emma Swan learns that all magic comes with a price. And pie. </p><p>A Captain Swan Pushing Daisies AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Way for Pie-Rates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seemeeimbeebee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seemeeimbeebee/gifts).



> For my CSSV seemeeimbeebee who asked the universe for Piemaker Emma Swan and Killian Jones as Chuck. Thank you for helping me realize just how well these puzzle pieces fit together. There is a second part coming, but I’m of the opinion this section also works as a stand alone.

Exactly 8 years, 7 months, 23 days, and 12 hours into her life, Emma Swan finally found a family.  No more orphanages or bouncing from one foster home to another. Ingrid Swan gave her a home, gave her a name. She even gave her a dog. There was poetry in going to the shelter with Ingrid, looking into the eyes of a beautiful mutt she’d call Henry, and giving him his forever home after finally finding hers. The young girl and her dog were inseparable. Until one day they were—by a speeding semi on the highway that skirted her town. Henry lay lifeless in the road, his black fur matted with blood. Emma couldn’t stand to see him like that and tentatively reached out to touch him. That’s when it happened, that tiny spark that shocked Henry back into life. That was the day young Emma realized she wasn’t like other children. Nor anyone else for that matter. Young Emma could touch dead things and bring them back to life. 

Emma’s gift was like a piece of Ikea furniture without the helpful Swedish instructions and pictograms. She was left to figure out the rules for herself. Such as the dead spiders she resurrected especially for Kevin, Ingrid’s very annoying nephew who suddenly didn’t want to visit with his mother Helga anymore. Pity that.

When she wasn’t busy tossing a frisbee for Henry or terrorizing bullies, young Emma spent her time looking out the window. Two boys lived next door. Not that Emma noticed. She only had eyes for the young Killian Jones, who was 10 years, 8 months, 15 days and 3 hours old the first time that they first spotted each other over Ingrid’s white picket fence. Young Emma might have had real magic, but it was nothing compared to the adventures the two concocted between themselves, with the occasional cameo from young Killian’s reluctant older brother when he deigned to join in their adventures as the nefarious Crocodile to Emma’s Tinkerbell and Killian’s Captain Hook. It was all beanstalks and dragons and enough Peter Pan that Emma took to calling Killian “Hook” which pleased the boy greatly. They pinky swore near Ingrid’s prize iceberg roses that Hook and Swan (Swan and Hook) would grow up to be nefarious pirates together.

It was after one such swashbuckling adventure that young Emma came home to Ingrid covered in rather fragrant mud from Killian’s Aunt Ariel’s now-swampy pumpkin patch. The new mother, who had just rolled out her 12th perfectly flaky pie crust of the day, wiped her floury hands on her apron before turning to clean up the mud-caked girl. “I’m so glad you made friends with the Jones boys. Such a shame about the parents, but they’ve made a good home with their Aunt Ariel. Fate works in such funny ways, don’t you think? You and your friend Hook are like two peas in a pod,” laughed a rueful Ingrid right before dropping dead of an undiagnosed aneurysm.

All of the ambient noises around her quieted save the pounding of young Emma’s heart and her footsteps on the wooden floor as she ran to Ingrid’s side. She felt the now-familiar hum of electricity-like magic under her skin as she touched the cheek of the woman who gave her her home. Ingrid got up about her business as if waking up from the dead on one’s kitchen floor was the most ordinary occurrence in the world. Young Emma blew out a huge sigh of relief that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in until just that moment. Sadly, it was the same moment in which she learned that all magic came with a price.

Emma mistakenly thought her gift just was. A thing was dead, she touched it, the thing was alive again. Imagine her surprise when exactly 60 seconds passed and Killian’s older brother Liam, who had been spraying off the muddy young boy in their Aunt Ariel’s garden, dropped dead with the hose still in his hand. Emma thought back in horror to all the lives she had saved. She didn’t regret Henry, who sat dutifully at her feet even now, but how many lives did she unknowingly take in her quest to squick Kevin with her army of resurrected spiders?

Liam’s untimely death was still weighing upon her heavily when Ingrid came to tuck her in that night.

“I know today was a shock for you, Emma. Seeing a friend just die like that. I can only imagine what Killian and his aunt are going through, especially so soon after losing his parents. He’s really lucky to have a friend like you.”

Emma couldn’t look Ingrid in the eye. “I’m a horrible friend.”

Ingrid smiled. “Oh sweetie,” she said, brushing her lips across Emma’s forehead.

That was the moment that Emma learned the final lesson about her so-called gift. Ingrid dropped dead. Again. And this time, no touch, no tears, no bargains or pleading could bring her back. Emma had unwittingly traded Liam’s young life for Ingrid’s. Only to lose her again. She wanted so much to hug Henry to her, or any kind of physical comfort, but she didn’t dare. One touch could restore life. Another brought death. And any longer than one minute meant a deadly exchange would be made.

Emma was thankful Ingrid’s sister Gerda was willing to take her in, rather than send her back into the system (or to Helga’s house where she’d be forced to share living quarters with Kevin). She was also thankful that the day she buried her adoptive mother before moving away to Boston, she got to see young Killian, whose Aunt Ariel was burying his brother on the same day a mere 27 feet and 9 inches from Ingrid’s plot. A gentle wind with a hint of chill was blowing from the north northwest and Killian had Liam’s old leather jacket wrapped around him like armor. The two walked toward each other, as if drawn by magnets, and Emma realized in that very moment that she loved Killian Jones. Grabbing the lapels of the oversized jacket, she kissed him for the first and last time.

Killian touched his swollen lips afterward. “That was…”

“…a one time thing.”


End file.
